Out with the old and in with the new.

First things first in getting Molly ready for the wedding is to give her a face lift.  She's getting on a bit and everything is starting to slip as it happens to the best of us.  We decided to respray her and make any required repairs along the way.
Here she is looking a bit of a sorry state after her rear door had fallen off.  This happened earlier in the year but other projects meant the repair was postponed.  In the picture you can see I have started the long and arduous task of rubbing her down.

 Now, Our Molly doesn't have an awful lot of steel in her compared to other vans of her size but what steel there is is subject to the same fate; rust.  We'd done a bit of welding to her before including repairing the bulkhead, a small section of chassis and the NS inner wheel arch.  But I also knew there was some lurking behind her front panel so I removed it to make the repairs.
Here is a section I removed and next to it is the new one I made to replace it.  At the bottom is another replacement although I've not yet made the square hole in the pic.

 The next sequence of photo's show the section being installed.  The top of the panels either side of the radiator were also rotton and needed replacing as were the forward part of the front wheel arches.  All the metal is good nick was ground back, treated and then primed.  I'll paint this all and waxoil what needs waxoiling in the near future.

Brakes bled and Molly hits the road (Grass)

We have temporarily borrowed Dolly's gear stick, though we are still endeavouring to find her a replacement. This enabled us to move her onto hard standing and get her bottom in the air.

We removed the old seized wheel cylinders and fitted the new items along with new brakes lines.

Then Rachel jumped under the van and we began the bleeding process. We quickly noticed the unions we had forgotten to tighten up and after that all went well. So, for the first time in our ownership and in the last 11 or so years, Molly took to the road (grass) in (relative) safety.
Rachel and Molly lapped the paddock time and time again with no problem although the heat and fumes from the exposed engine were a bit much after half an hour or so.

After this we need to get the headlamps and wipers working, get an exhaust tail piece, reattach the drivers door, fit new locks and get a horn. Then it's MOT time.